The Boy of my Dreams
by Sweet Chilly
Summary: Clarissa, a rather shy and reserved child, is feeling especially lonely when she feels that she has no one to share her strange dreams of a mysterious boy that she's never met. Please review and tell me what you think, much appreciated!
1. Chapter 1

**Author's note: **Wow, so this is my first fanfic in ages and a lot has changed around here while I've been gone. As you all now, everything Harry Potter affiliated belongs to J.K. Rowling and not little ol' me. Please review so that I can know what you like and what you think I should improve on:-)

She sat in the corner of the classroom, in the spot that one would classify as your classic 'social reject area', making it all the more easier to ignore select person in that position. Of course, she had no choice as to where she sat as this was sixth grade and classroom seats were assigned. Ironically, the seat did seem to suit her quiet demeanor.

Clarissa Albright seemed not to be entirely different from the other students at West Eden. Clarissa wore the same green jumper uniform the other girls wore to school, she had those stylish butterfly clips placed just so in her bright red hair (on days that she could get away with it), she stored her homework in the dazzling Lisa Frank folders…She was just a face in a crowd of equally indistinguishable students that plagued the dim classrooms of the learning facility.

Clarissa pulled herself out of a daydream and stared down at the blank piece of paper placed in front of her. Today was the most exciting point that her classes would take during the day. It was Art hour and this was really the only class period that Clarissa enjoyed.

Mr. Moore, the school's art teacher, had given them a rather easy assignment considering that it was Friday and there was no use in starting a new project until Monday. The class was to draw their version of a superhero and there were no limits to their creativity; they could make their hero have a madcap power such as 'meat vision' if they so desired. Most students thought of the assignment as juvenile, as they were in a secondary school now and were above such a task, but they couldn't disguise their simple pleasure when they began to work.

Clarissa scribbled away feverously at her small desk. Drawing was the one activity that she greatly enjoyed. It gave her a feeling of being, peace, fulfillment… it was the one thing in the world that made her feel like she could rise above the sea of mediocrity that the other students would eventually drown in.

Mr. Moore clapped his hands as he approached the front of the classroom. "Alright class, the period is almost up. Let's see what you drew, shall we?"

He walked by each child's desk, examining their outrageous drawings and occasionally holding up a piece of work for the class to admire with their ooh's and ahh's.

He finally reached the corner seat in the back of the classroom.

Mr. Moore picked up her drawing and held it to the side so that the nosy boy who sat next to her could not even steal a glance at it. After a few moments he swiftly placed it faced down on her desk.

"Well, he doesn't seem to be much of a hero, does he?" Her teacher laughed silently to himself as he absentmindedly stroked his thick mustache. "Would you like to describe him to me and to the rest of the class?"

Clarissa awkwardly cleared her throat and looked nervously at her teacher. After receiving a nod of assurance, she slowly lifted up her drawing to show the class and began to speak.

There were a few murmurs of confusion throughout the class as they gazed upon a simple drawing of a boy in thick round glasses standing awkwardly against a blank background.

"My… my superhero looks like just any regular boy," she said softly, but just loud enough so that the class could hear her. "But he's really the most powerful being to walk Earth…"

She was immediately stopped by the interjections of her classmates as they started throwing out ideas of how their superhero could easily defeat Clarissa's, even if she had said that he was the most powerful. To them, their superhero was the most mighty and dominating and none other mattered, especially since Clarissa's poor superhero only seemed to be an ordinary boy. They soon got wrapped up in their discussions of the fate-deciding battle of Steven's Lava Man versus Christina's Squirrel Boy and Clarissa was able to breathe a sigh of relief and venture back into her realm of solitude and daydreams.

The shrill bell rang and the students ventured out of the classroom hastily, wanting to get home as soon as possible to begin their weekend of cartoon watching and video gaming. Clarissa pushed her way through the crowd of hyperactive preteens and hurried out of the plain brick building.

Her best friend, Jamie Harris, was waiting for her at the usual spot by the rusted chain link fence that separated the quiet suburban neighborhood from the school district. She inattentively twirled her long brown hair as she leaned against the fence.

Upon Clarissa's arrival, Jamie immediately pulled out a pair of lollipops from her pink backpack and held them out to her friend.

"I managed to get these from that kid Eric today," Jamie said proudly as Clarissa carefully chose the grape lollipop over the mystery flavored. "He said that I couldn't beat him in a race from the library to the kickball field. Boy did I whip him!"

Clarissa nodded in acknowledgment. They began their walk home, taking their sweet time as they pleased, not unlike they normally did. This was the only time during the school week that they could spend together, as they had no classes together this year.

After listening to Jamie reenact a comical conversation that she had at lunch, Clarissa pondered before finally speaking for the first time in minutes.

"Jamie, do you think that magic exists?"

Jamie stopped dead in her tracks and sharply looked at Clarissa. "What d'you mean? If you mean Santa, I've known that he wasn't real since the third grade."

"Not that. I mean real magic, like making stuff float in the air and making doves appear out of nowhere." Clarissa sucked on her lollipop babyishly as she waited for her friend to reply.

"I dunno." Jamie ran her fingers against the brick wall of the post office that they were passing. "If it existed, wouldn't we have noticed by now?"

Clarissa shrugged. "Maybe it's really hard to see. Maybe you have to believe in order to see it. Or maybe you're born with it."

"It seems stupid to me," Jamie said and threw her lollipop stick at a dumpster. "I mean our parents lied about other magic existing like the tooth fairy and the Easter Bunny. Next thing you know, we'll find out that God doesn't exist."

"That's a pretty awful thing to say, considering we go to a Christian school," Clarissa pointed out.

"Yeah, but you know what I mean. I can't believe our parents fell for such crap when they were our age."

Clarissa cast a sideways glance at Jamie. Jamie was awfully mature at her age, at least she liked to think so and didn't miss an opportunity to make herself sound older than she was.

"Well, I believe in magic," Clarissa said, kicking a stone into the street. "Even if our parents lied about everything else, I still believe."

Jamie sighed huffily and stopped at the gate in front of her house. "Whatever, I'll see you tomorrow. You're still coming over, right?"

"Mm-hmm. I'll see you then."

Clarissa waved good-bye and continued on, quickly loosing herself in another daydream of what could be.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's note: **Roses are red, violets are blue; me no own, so you no sue! (I probably stole that from someone but we my friends and I used to say it a lot back in the day) Oh, and if you're wondering about the format of the story, I'm too lazy to fix it and make it pretty.

She awoke with a start, his face still fresh in her mind. She quickly reached over to her nightstand and fumbled around in the dark for her sketchbook and a pencil.

Clarissa squinted her eyes shut again and tried to picture the face that had come to her in the dream. The round face, those startling eyes, and that _scar_… She held on to that face and scribbled away in the book.

This was not a strange occurrence to Clarissa. For the past month she had been seeing this face in her dreams, each night the vision becoming more clear and easier to hang onto when she stirred from her sleep. She had recently taken to trying to draw his face as she saw it in her mind after she roused from her slumber.

She opened her large brown eyes again and switched on the lamp at her bedside. There he was, clear as day. Clarissa tilted the sketchbook here and there, trying to catch some feeling of life in her drawing, trying to sense the kind of person that he was, deep in his soul.

For as long as she could remember, Clarissa had exceptionally vivid dreams of people she had never met. Most of them faded after a week or two, but this dream was especially stubborn. This was also the first time that she was able to accurately depict them in her drawings, a sign that her skills were improving greatly.

Clarissa yawned silently as she switched off the lamp, returning her room to it's former darkness. She felt as though she ought to be learning something from these dreams that she was having, but they always ended before she could grasp even a hint of the true meaning. She made a mental note to look up books on dreams at the school library the next day.

With that, Clarissa dozed off again, returning once again to the dominion of dreams and unsure of what she would find.

The irritating hum of Clarissa's alarm clock propelled her from her sleep and left her without any trace of what she had been dreaming about. She immediately grabbed the sketchbook off the nightstand and saw the drawing of the mysterious face. Clarissa vaguely remembered stirring in the middle of the night to draw the face, but she could not recall the exact dream it had appeared in.

She flipped through her sketchbook, reflecting on the past midnight sketches that she had done. This drawing was becoming part of a series, that was for sure. This particular series certainly the best that she had drawn so far, but she remembered that these dreams were the clearest that she had had. The other drawings were either meaningless symbols, archaic imagery most likely, or less clear faces. She sighed and gathered up her books and shoved them as best as she could into her Hello Kitty backpack.

"Clarissa!" her mother shouted from the kitchen. "Hurry up and eat or you'll be late for school!"

"Blech," responded Clarissa to herself as she dove into her disorderly closet to find a clean uniform. "The evil place where they keep my report card."

She ran out the door just as Jamie was passing her house, whistling and watching the cars pass as if she weren't anticipating her friend to come running out of the house, as usual.

"Good morning, Jamie!" Clarissa chirped, uncharacteristically.

"Look who's become Little Miss Sunshine," Jamie said. "What's gotten into _you_?"

Clarissa shrugged. "Nothing, it's nothing."

Jamie eyed her suspiciously. After a moment or so she tossed her ponytail in disbelief and continued on down the sidewalk.

Clarissa sighed. There wasn't any way that Jamie would ever understand her drawings, not after that episode a month ago. She had lost hope of making Jamie believe. But it would make things so much easier, having someone to talk to about her discoveries and abilities.

Before she realized it, they were already standing in front of the school. Jamie drew in a sharp breath, as if preparing herself for the worst, and sauntered on with her head bent slightly forward as if to push through the crowd like a bull. Clarissa had to practically had to run to keep up with Jamie's long strides.

Clarissa cast a glance over towards the high school and watched a couple of teens throw a football effortlessly back and forth between them. The schools were rather squashed together, as if to save enough space so that further housing development would be able to take place in the already highly populated neighborhood. Because of this, high-schoolers were often meshed with the middle-schoolers during the free time before and after school.

Clarissa snapped out of her daydream and realized that she had lost Jamie. She looked around in a panic, feeling at once awkwardly alone in the world and unable to function properly. In her panic, she bumped into a group of girls from the high school. She fell backwards, hard on the concrete, and her books went flying out of her backpack.

"Watch where you're going!" scolded one of the girls as she tossed her elegant blond hair. "Honestly, I hate middle-schoolers. They're so helpless."

Clarissa was taken aback and she choked down tears, trying as hard as she could not to let them see how they got to her.

"Here, let me help you." Strong hands lifted her up from her fetal position on the ground.

Clarissa stared into the porcelain face of her savior. He smiled slightly and walked over to where one of her books lay skewed on the sidewalk.

He moved in complete silence and grace, quickly picking up her things from their scattered positions around her. Clarissa blushed bright red and immediately began to pick up after herself as well, suddenly feeling embarrassed by her loud and childish backpack.

"Th-thank you very much," Clarissa sputtered, feeling utterly like a fool.

"No problem," he replied as he flipped through her sketchbook.

Wait, her sketchbook! The one where she kept all of her dream drawings? Clarissa winced. No one ever saw that book, and she had meant to leave it at home…it must have gotten mixed up in her school books this morning!  
"These are pretty good," he said as he walked over to her. "Better than what I would expect to come from a middle-schooler."

Clarissa could only nod, unable to speak. She prayed that he stopped before he got to-

"Hey, who's the boy with funny looking scar on his forehead? It looks like a lightening bolt."

Clarissa's eyes widened and she snatched her book away from him. She wasn't sure why, but she wasn't ready for anyone, let alone a complete stranger, learn anything about her secret and see her most private of dreams.

Without another glimpse in his direction, Clarissa fled into the safety of her school. She panted heavily down the hallways and finally stopped to rest by a water fountain. After she composed herself, she walked slowly down the hallway to her locker, to stuff the seemingly innocent book into its four secure walls to lessen the chance of someone else seeing it during the day.


End file.
